Preparation Assignment For Engineering/Science/STEM Ambassadors

NOTE: It is important that each student bring a laptop to the training. If you do not have a laptop, please ask your advisor if he or she can arrange for you to borrow one from your school. The laptop should have PowerPoint. Internet access will be available at the workshop.

OverviewDuring your upcoming Ambassador training, you will be working with an assigned partner from your school. Your task throughout the training is to create a 10-15 minute presentation to give in a middle or high school math or science class. This presentation should highlight interesting engineering concepts, technologies, or innovations and briefly show how those projects use a math or science concept that the student might be learning in class. The goal of this presentation is to show the audience (middle or high school students) what engineering is and get them excited about engineering. Each team will give their formal presentation during the “Presentation Showcase” on Sunday morning.

The focus of the workshop will be the development of the presentation. However, when you visit a high school class, you should try to combine your presentation with a hands-on activity. You will not need to do the hands-on activity at the workshop, but you should have a relevant activity in mind and briefly explain the activity to the workshop audience. For your first presentation, it might be easier to think of an activity first, then “work backwards” to develop a presentation centered on it.

Action Items Before the WorkshopCreating a polished and exciting presentation in such a short period of time will definitely be a challenge. To help ensure you are successful, please complete the following steps before coming to the workshop.

1. Read pages 1 - 12 of the Executive Summary from Changing the ConversationChanging the Conversation is a study done by the National Academy of Engineering and is a tool for improving the public image of engineering and outreach efforts related to engineering. The findings in this study are the types of messages that you should consider emphasizing in your presentations. When selecting the topic and content for your presentation, please be sure to consider and enact the themes discussed in Changing the Conversation. Framing these talks with these messages is one of the distinguishing factors of Engineering Ambassadors Network programs.

2. Determine a topic for your presentation and submit by the following deadlines:

One of the most important (and difficult) parts of this process is choosing a topic. Begin immediately to determine two possible topic ideas with your partner, and submit these topics for feedback from the workshop instructors. You can do this by filling out the Topic Proposal form and posting the document to the ﻿“Topic Proposal” folder labeled by University in Google Drive﻿. You should have received an invitation to access this Google doc. If you cannot find the invitation, please email Kathy Roe.

3. Critical thinking about slide design and brainstorming visual evidenceOne key focus of our workshop will be the effective design of presentation slides for communicating science in an engaging and clear manner. We will utilize the Assertion-Evidence slide design for your Ambassador presentations. We will devote formal lecture time on the first day of the workshop to teaching this method, but we suggest you download the Assertion Evidence Template and Tutorial to your laptop:

Collect interesting visual evidence (images, diagrams, videos, etc.) related to your topic that could be used to explain your ideas in your presentation. Having some visuals available will prepare you to develop your presentation at the workshop.